I am very unhappy.

I received my copy of The Rejected Quarterly today and found more than a few librties taken with my story.  I understand that a little editorial discretion is to be expected, even appreciated, but there comes a point where the author will become offended.

It started with small stuff.  A paragraph split into two paragraphs, a narrative aside comment grouped into quotation marks (a if spoken aloud…by the wrong character).  I took those in stride; they really just changed the perspective of the story.  But then…

In a fairly complex part of the story, where the protagonist explains the root of his psychological problems, twenty-eight words were completely omitted.  It ruined the logic of the story.  The printed version makes no sense. That reflects on me (assuming anyone reads TRQ).  They didn’t ruin a masterpiece, but it was a clever story that comes across a lot less clever when you start scratching your head and saying “what did I miss?”  You missed twenty-eight words.

Why did they do it?  The splice point makes sense from a bad-typesetter perspective, but I sent an electronic copy of the story that should have been pretty much cut-and-paste.  It seems as though the cut was made in order to save the story from spilling over onto the next page.  If they needed twenty-eight words cut, I could have cut from several different places, just sectioning out a joke or a POV reaction.    It’s too sloppy to be an attempted edit.  It was simply sloppiness and is unacceptable.

I am furious and embarrassed.  I had intended to buy copies of the issue as gifts for my mother and maybe some other people.  No longer.  I don’t expect to apply there again.  I wonder if others have had this experience before.  I have not shared my displasure with the editor yet; I’m not sure how to approach it.  All I know is that I’m unhappy.

-Oso Enojado